Wendy Mnookin: In the Small Rotary
where Route 100 meets School Street,
two cows graze.
Joseph E Davis: Let’s avoid talk of ‘chemical imbalance’ — it’s people in distress
The idea that one’s distress is primarily caused by a neurochemical deficiency that can be corrected by a drug is a fiction. The idea that it explains first-person experience or that it offers some exemption from responsibility is a fiction as well.
Stephen Dobyns: Leaf Blowers
That autumn morning he awoke to the crying
of lost souls that quickly changed to the roar
of leaf blowers up and down the street
Liz Moran: (Harper’s Bazaar)
I watched her for ten long minutes
in Barnes & Noble.
Michelle Bitting: Walls
Worst I had to deal with, well, I suppose that time my son was shut in a padded room and shit himself at the special needs school. He was 13 and having one helluva wiring crisis. I got called to come get him after he graffitied his feces across white walls.
Elena Karina Byrne: Reality may still be unacceptable Gerhard Richter
A Repeating Dream I’m Belly-Down at Eleven
beneath barbwire like bedsprings during night-climbs
Jon Queally: Just Hours After Anti-Semitic Remarks, Trump Promotes Himself as ‘King of Israel… Second Coming of God’
“The President is a raving lunatic,” responded Florida Democrat Andrew Gillum. “He is not well.”
Leslie McGrath: Her Dementia
I walk the earth and have forgotten
which memory’s mine and which is not
and who was she I used to be.
Adrian Blevins: What Makes Us Lose Our Minds
You find out about people like Nigel in little bits and pieces, anyway. It happens while you’re wondering whether the hills might in another country look like white elephants until … Continue reading
Adrian Blevins: Of Madmen and Spies
I take as my theme the mentally ill, understanding as I do just how tepid the bathwater is. So let’s not neglect for a moment the voyeur’s own affliction—her writerly … Continue reading